Chapter 4

Saeko only took three steps so far, and that alone was enough to convince her that she has entered the Devil's Den.

It would seem that she's at the buffet area right now. A huge table occupied the centre of the room. On the table are all sorts of food, drinks and desserts. Saeko couldn't help but stare.

There's curry, of course. Its aroma has been tempting her for quite a while now. Next to the bubbling pot is a huge bowl of fried chicken. There are also pizzas, fries, sausages and-

Saeko shakes her head vigorously to clear her mind of temptations. She forced herself to calm down. She reminds herself that she's here to investigate those eyes, not indulge in a buffet. And then, she caught something from the corner of her eyes. Something that forced her to stop and stare again.

Dear god, is that a... chocolate fountain?

And then, Saeko notices a sinister detail.

Some, if not all the rooms are located in this area. All the entrances are facing the table. In other words, anyone stepping out of their room would immediately be feasted with the sight of the mountain of food and drinks.

The comics themselves were placed on shelves further beyond this area. How ironic. They were meant to be the main attraction of the facility, yet they were pushed into a corner like an afterthought. The toilets were also located there as well.

In other words, the patrons literally can't go anywhere without passing by the buffet: browsing comics, using the restroom, or even leaving. Whoever that designed this place knew exactly what they were doing. How crafty of them.

Saeko shakes her head again. This is no time to be condemning the architecture style of the place she's just taking temporary refuge. She really, REALLY has to begin her investigation as soon as possible since she doesn't even know how long it might take, and she doesn't have all night. Following the staff's instruction, she enters the Room 102.

The interior is around the same size as her cubicle back at the office. Instead of a chair, there's a bed in front of the office desk and the wide-screen computer, complete with a pillow and a blanket. Saeko sits down cross-legged on the bed and boots up the computer.

"Let's see... "Shinya No Manako"... And, enter."

Hinata mentioned that she saw thousands of posts related to the eyes. That was actually an understatement. In fact, there are tens of thousands of them. 11,540, to be exact.

Saeko was flabbergasted. Didn't Hinata also say that the eyes were first spotted in less than a month ago? Why are there so many people talking about them already?

She figures that she has to start somewhere, so she clicks on the first result. It brings her to an online discussion forum. For all she knows, this is the same website that gave Hinata her knowledge on urban legends.

Saeko gets busy at once. She reads posts after posts, taking in each and every word. The posts are often repetitive, and mostly contain information that she already knew. Even so, she kept on reading. Who knows? There might be a new information lurking around.

That said, her progress is slow. For one thing, she's exhausted. She has been staring at the computer for the entire day and then some more. She could barely keep her eyes open at this point. It's absolutely not helping that she's sitting on a bed right now. she could just lie down and sleep...

SLAP!

Saeko slapped her cheek hard. This is no time to be sleeping. She has to-

GROWL!

Saeko rolls her eyes and groans. If it isn't one thing, it's another. All she ate for dinner is a single sandwich. Of course she's hungry. To make things worse, there's the aroma from the food outside. She has to find a way to deal with it if she's ever coming back.

Concentrate, concentrate...

Then, she came across a post that caught her attention.

"Say, this might sound random, but they could be a new species of Mokumokuren."

Saeko got curious and searched for this "Mokumokuren." Apparently, it's a type of yokai that is often found living in the holes of torn paper sliding doors. They always appear as dozens or even hundreds of eyes. Generally, they are harmless. All they do is stare at you. Once the holes in the paper doors are patched up, they will disappear.

This yokai and Shinya no Manako do share similarities, but it's obvious that they're two different entities altogether.

"The hell they are! For starters, Shinya no Manako appear almost everywhere!" another post disagrees.

"They also don't stare at you until become stressed," another post adds.

"I've read dozens of posts like that, but I still don't get it. What's so scary about being stared at? We all got stared by others."

It's comments like these that allow Saeko to differentiate between people who are being tormented by those eyes and those who aren't. The latter can afford to be nonchalant since they don't know how scary those eyes can be.

After scrolling some more, Saeko sees a really long post.

"This didn't happen to me personally, but to a co-worker of mine. For convenience's sake, let's just call him K.

K and I, along with a few others, were part of the same construction company. Three weeks ago, we were tasked to maintain a bridge. Changing bolts, replacing metal parts, those sorts of things. Everything went smoothly during the first week. It was after a week that K started to act weird.

It started with something small. He kept on telling us that he sees a pair of eyes staring at him from a nearby building. I said "nearby", but that building was so far away from the bridge you could only reach it by driving for at least thirty minutes. And yet, he told us that he could see the eyes clearly, right down to its whites and pupils."

When Saeko read until this part, she felt her heart beating faster and faster. K experienced the same thing she did. She takes a few deep breaths to calm herself before continuing.

"Naturally, the rest of us thought he was hallucinating from working himself a little too hard. As the days went by, his condition kept on getting worse. He started to yell, "Leave me alone!" and "Stop staring at me!" at thin-air, and even tried to poke his own eyes out once or twice. It got so bad to the point where our foreman had to tell him to go home and rest.

We visited his house two days later, and found out that he barricaded all the windows with planks. His sobbing wife told us that he would go mad during midnight, screaming and shrieking about eyes that don't even exist. She even had to tie him up because he won't stop trying to reach for his eyeballs and dig them out. She also mentioned that he would only act like this during midnight, and was completely fine during the day. And then, two days ago, when we went to visit him again, his eyes were covered in bandages. He told us that he can't stand those eyes staring at him any longer, so he got rid of his eyes."

Saeko had to pause there because she felt like puking, even though there's next to nothing inside that stomach of hers. That was so grotesque she feels like yelling at the person who wrote the post for not giving a heads-up first. Then again, that person won't be able to hear her, anyway. When she finally managed to calm herself down, she forces herself to reach through the rest of the post.

"Just as we thought that his situation couldn't get any worse, his wife called us this morning to inform us that he has committed suicide by swallowing some rat poison. Heaven knows how he even got hold of them in the first place. After I heard of his death, I started digging around. Eventually, I stumbled upon this website and learned the existence of Shinya no Manako.

I decided to post this story so that I could warn those who actually saw the eyes. Don't ever laugh them off. I strongly advice you to come up with a way to get rid of them as soon as possible. As for how, I have no idea. Good luck."

If the incident where K blinded himself made Saeko feel like vomiting her stomach out, his final act made her skin crawl. Again, she had to calm herself before moving on.

There are some comments below this post. Saeko made sure to read them all.

"Whoa..."

"What in the world..."

"Do you know whether K did anything wrong before he started seeing those eyes?"

"He had been drugging and raping women," the person who posted the story replied back.

"...And you and your colleagues just let him be?"

"Hey, don't blame us! We didn't know, okay? We only found out about it after he passed away!"

"Either way, let's not talk shit about him since he's already dead," a third person posted.

"Agreed."

Saeko decides to take a short break after reading that nauseating story. She needs to use the restroom, anyway, so she crawled out of her bed and left her room.

On her way to the toilet, she made sure to lower her head and look downwards at all times. Not because she's afraid to exchange glances with the eyes, but she doesn't want to look at all the food and drinks-

Saeko stops walking as a question formed inside her head without a single warning.

Why don't the eyes ever follow her indoors?

Her apartment, her office, the laundromat, and now this manga café. They were always so diligent in stalking and staring at her, but they were never around when she's taking refuge inside a building. She's glad of the fact, of course, but she's curious nonetheless. Maybe she can find her answer at the forum. Either way, it'll be put on hold until she's done with her business.

When she enters the restroom, she's shocked to find that other than four water closets, there are also has four shower cabins.

No way...

She takes a quick peek inside one of them. Sure enough, a showerhead is installed. A bottle of shampoo and body shampoo are placed on a small rack.She leaves the restroom and goes to the reception counter, where the same bored-looking staff was sitting behind it.

"Um, excuse me. How much do you charge for the shower room?" she asks him.

"It's free of charge, miss," he replies.

Saeko is ecstatic. If the staff wasn't still looking at her, she might have jumped in joy.

"Where can I get a towel?" she asks instead.

Instead of replying, the staff got up from his seat and goes to a cabinet behind it. He opens it and takes out two rolls of towels.

"Please enjoy the shower," he tells her as he hands her the towels.

"I will! Oh, I need some hangers too, please..."

With towels and hangers in hands, Saeko heads to the restroom once more. All of the sudden, her feet feels much lighter.

***

"Ow! Hot! Hot! Hot!"

After quickly adjusting the temperature of the water, Saeko stands in front of the showerhead and let the hot water drench her naked body.

She closes her eyes. She feels her lips curving into a smile. This is her first hot water shower after more than two years. She made sure to take her time, but not too long since she doesn't want to wrinkle her skin.

Once she's cleaned and dried, she puts on her work uniform again and heads back to her room. Right, back to the investigation.

She couldn't find anyone posting the question she was curious about. However, she did find a question that sparked her interest even more.

"If you guys are freaked out by the eyes so much, why don't you just team up and meet in real life?"

That's... an excellent question. The person who posted this question is right. Working in a group is definitely better than facing those eyes alone. She clicked on the post to look at the comments.

"Are you kidding me? All of us did something we were not proud of. Do you really expect us to share what we did to some strangers?"

"I agree with the person above me. I'm so ashamed of my past I don't even talk to my family anymore, much less people I don't even know."

"I prefer to do this solo, thank you. I can't bring myself to trust former criminals."

These are also valid points. Saeko can't even trust herself because unlike these people, she doesn't remember what exactly did she do wrong. Unless stealing wi-fi is indeed a serious offense.

She looks at the time. It's getting really late, and she has to go to sleep now. Before she closes the window, she decides to make an account in the website so that she could start posting.

User name... What would be good? Hinata or someone she knows might frequent this forum, so she can't go for obvious ones like "Y.Saeko" or "Yamashita 20". After giving it some thought, she chose "SakanaMountain20".

Yup, good enough. It's random, and it wasn't taken. No point in thinking about something as pointless as this. Now that her account has been made, it's time to post her question.

"Hello, everyone... I'm being stalked by the eyes too, but they're never around whenever I'm inside a building. Any idea why?" she mutters to herself as she types.

She doesn't expect to get a reply immediately, which is why she posted this right before she sleeps. With any luck, she'll get some answers when she wakes up.

Okay, now she can go to sleep.